SULAIMANI (ESTA) — The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) stands ready to offer assistance and receive people wounded in a fire at a coronavirus hospital in Iraq’s southern city of Nasiriyah, health minister Saman Barzinji said on Tuesday.
A large fire broke out at Imam al-Hussein coronavirus hospital in Nasiriyah late on Monday, killing at least 44 people and wounded more than 67 others.
Minister Barzinji spoke by phone with officials at the Iraqi health ministry and the general director of health in Dhi Qar as well as the province’s governor, the ministry said in a statement.
He expressed the KRG’s readiness to “provide relief, send necessary medical supplies and receive the wounded and patients at the hospitals in the Kurdistan Region”, the statement read.
Initial police reports suggested that an oxygen tank explosion inside the hospital’s COVID-19 wards was the likely cause of the fire, a policeman at the scene of the fire told Reuters.
In April, a fire caused by an oxygen tank explosion at a COVID-19 hospital in Baghdad killed at least 82 people and injured 110 others.
